


Once More, With Superheroes

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, loki is a little shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 18:08:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has issues, and Loki thinks that they should get them out through song.</p><p>That, and it's entertaining watching people accidentally confess their feelings to each other via musical numbers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once More, With Superheroes

**Author's Note:**

> Personally, I think it's better if you read this while listening to the music.
> 
> And yes, I did get the title from 'Once More, With Feeling.'

At first, everyone thinks it’s a sudden increase of random flash mobs. Weird ones, granted, but it’s New York and people have done weirder things.

Besides, they didn’t have time to watch the news over the first few days it starts, because the day after it starts, the Avengers spend eight hours fighting off an attack of giant gingerbread men who happen to be mind-controlled by Loki into being homicidal. Which is a lot less fun than it sounds, according to everyone but Clint, whose chosen method of taking down of the few remaining ones, after their numbers have dwindled, is biting huge chunks out of their less important body parts.

The screaming can be heard all throughout Lower Manhattan. Along with flash mobs, there’s a sudden increase of therapy, and Hawkeye gets banned from the field for the next week.

Clint just sighs happily, flops down on the chair Coulson usually sits in, and pats his swollen stomach. “Worth it.”

Everyone around the room makes varying grunts of disapproval, due to having watched the gingerbread men- gingerbread _people_ , because they’re sure they saw a few dresses pressed on in icing- dying slowly, most of them impaled on giant cooling racks, courtesy of Loki. Which isn’t any definition of ‘settling,’ and there are going to be _so_ many people supressing shudders when the Christmas season comes around and those particular baked goods come on sale again.

Steve _definitely_ included, because the scent of ginger is now caked into his nostrils and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to get it out if he rubbed lye into them. “Whatever you say, Hawkeye.”

Clint makes a happy little noise of contentment, and Steve opens his mouth to ask if it’s even _safe_ to be digesting the mutant, sentient gingerbread, before Coulson comes in.

Before anyone can say anything, Coulson waves a hand towards Clint without looking up from the file he’s holding. “Barton, medical.”

“I’m fine-”

“You have Loki’s mind-controlled gingerbread people currently sitting in your colon,” Coulson says. “Go to medical, now.”

After another five minutes of Clint whinging and Coulson being nerve-shatteringly calm, Clint gets up with a groan and heads out the door.

Apparently, once the gingerbread ‘dies,’ it turns back into regular gingerbread and Clint’s totally fine except for how much freaking gingerbread he ate.

Steve stopped finding all of this strange about two years ago.

 

 

 

 

When Coulson and Clint get back, they’re quiet enough that Thor starts to ask if anything happened before Natasha elbows him in the gut to cut him off.

“Ow,” Thor says, and Natasha smiles, snakelike.

“Sorry. My arm slipped.”

From the other side of the room, Clint rolls his eyes up to the ceiling, which Steve suspects is another excuse not to meet Coulson’s eyes. “Sureeee it did.”

Steve looks at Tony over his coffee in a silent question, and Tony shrugs, like, _how the hell am I supposed to know what’s up with Coulson and bird-brain_?

Still looking at Steve, Tony twists in his chair enough that he can look at the couch where Phil and Clint are sitting together in stony silence. “Hey, what the fuck.”

Natasha’s smile is leaning worryingly towards homicidal, and Steve bites down on a grimace as Tony continues with all his usual tactfulness.

“What the fuck yourself,” Clint shoots back, not looking at anyone and especially not Coulson, who isn’t as adamant about not looking at Clint, but is avoiding it all the same.

“This is why you’ll never be a politician.” Tony takes a mouthful of his coffee, talking around it. “You two have been the most awkward thing in the history of all awkwardness and we were all wondering what’s going on in paradise.”

Natasha looks like she very well might march over and stab Tony in the neck for the second time around, only this time with the fork she’s holding. Everyone else looks reluctantly curious.

“We ask because we care,” Thor says, obviously trying to be helpful and also quoting that episode of Doctor Phil Steve had caught him watching.

Clint mutters something under his breath, which Steve can’t hear even with his super-hearing, but can tell it’s sarcastic. Coulson’s jaw ticks, which is more than enough to get all of them worried, because after almost three years of knowing Coulson, he only does that when he’s at his worst.

“There have been,” Coulson says, and looks like he’s struggling to find the right words. “Strange things happening in New York for the past few days, and apparently we’ve been… affected by it.”

Tony says, “Oh, so one of you has crabs,” with a bite into his sandwich, and Steve cuffs him lightly on the back of the head.

Tony turns around. Mouths _what_ at him like he’s been mortally offended.

“You _know_ what, don’t look at me all high-and-mighty,” Steve says under his breath, and then, louder: “By ‘strange things,’ do you mean stranger than walking gingerbread people?”

“It’s arguable,” Coulson says after a few seconds, with that faux-calm that’s looking more and more stretched with every minute passing. “SHIELD suspects Loki’s behind it.”

“Have they confirmed anything?”

“It’s definitely something Loki would do.”

“What is it?”

Coulson’s eyes flicker towards Clint, who is staring determinedly at the ceiling, before looking back at Steve again. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

Which is bad news all around, because even though Coulson is more or less Fury’s lackey, he’s always overridden his loyalty to SHIELD to his loyalty to the Avengers, so whatever it is has got to be bad.

“Mm,” Tony says around his sandwich, chewing wetly. “Do I have to start hacking again? Because I hate getting that one-eyed glare from Fury any more than I already have to.”

Coulson gives him the glare on Fury’s account. “You’ll probably experience the effects of it in a few days or so. It’s spreading.”

“…are you sure it’s not crabs?”

Coulson doesn’t even bother glaring this time; just looks at him tiredly. He gets up, facing the room. “I’ve been instructed to tell you that until Loki’s latest threat is neutralized, the Avengers are hereby banned from going out into the field.”

“SHIELD can fuck off,” Clint says, sitting up. “That wasn’t part of the-”

Tony says, “If SHIELD thinks we’re just going to sit back with our thumbs up our asses while- fuck, I don’t know, giant spiders storm New York or something-”

“I’ll be back with more information tomorrow,” Coulson cuts them both off, and turns on his heel.

Clint doesn’t watch him leave, just sits back with his arms tight across his chest and focuses out the window.

Steve meets Tony’s gaze again, and Tony shrugs, more helplessly this time.

 

 

 

 

Clint is just as quiet and pissed off for the next day or so, and stays that way all through his sparring, which is violent and almost gets Natasha’s hand cut off when she doesn’t move fast enough.

“Ease up, Clint,” Steve calls across the gym, and Clint flips him off.

A few feet away on a mat, Bruce stops punching Thor- apparently the only injuries from that are Bruce’s knuckles- to pant, “He’s still in a mood?”

Steve glances over at Bruce before getting back into fighting position in front of Tony. “Whatever happened must have been pretty bad for him to get like this. According to Darcy, Coulson’s not much better.”

Darcy sticks up her hand from the corner, where she’s glued to the screen of her phone. “He made a newbie agent cry a few hours ago.”

Bruce asks, “Did they break up,” and Thor’s head comes up, his face set in a concerned way that Steve’s only seen him and puppies do.

Darcy shrugs, bottom lip jutting out, and Tony pushes his sweaty hair off his forehead. “I asked.”

Steve says, “And?”

“I got shot at, ‘accidentally.’ Never mind I _made_ him those boomerang arrows. No, they didn’t break up,” Tony says, “but it’s not looking good.”

Darcy finally looks up from her screen, sighing. “Crap.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Tony says, and then grinds his fist into his empty palm. “Come on, Cap, I have frustrations I need to get out via kicking your ass into next week.”

Steve smirks despite himself. Unless Tony’s the problem- which it is a lot of the time, Tony’s very problematic- sparring with Tony always makes him feel better. The easy bantering, the methodical fighting that Steve only loses when he wants to, and, of course, the view.

The view, i.e. Tony’s lean, built body dripping sweat into the mat. How his hair sticks along the back of his neck, how his hands shift to brush sweat out of his eyes. The thick cut of his hipbones, of the blunt edges of the arc reactor which Tony used to be so guarded about until about a year ago, when he had finally started taking his shirt off during sparring sessions.

And it’s a good view, one that Steve sometimes prefers more to the Armani suits, which are tailored to fit snugly _everywhere_ , which Tony wears effortlessly, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, along with astrophysics.

But then again, maybe Steve’s just biased, because he’s always found Tony ridiculously attractive, no matter what he’s doing. Covered in alien slime, walking down the hall with a towel slung around his hips, on a stage and bowing for a crowd, in the workshop covered in various greases, walking around in casual clothes with a cup of coffee in his slim fingers- Steve finds himself staring at every version of Tony at every opportunity he can get, and it’s just another one of those things Steve has learned to live with, like how he occasionally breaks the dishes he’s washing by squeezing too hard.

So Steve is looking Tony over, looking at how his fingers flex, over how his tongue comes out to wet his lips, over how he’s probably tasting sweat as he does, and then- and then-

And then then suddenly there’s low, sultry guitar music coming out of nowhere.

Like, _literally_ out of nowhere, and except for everyone stopping, no-one reacts, and Steve is walking towards Tony before his brain can catch up with why he’s doing it.

Steve hasn’t had much experience with alcohol, but from what he can remember when he was seventeen, this right now feels sort of like being incredibly, epically wasted, where everything is warm and you’re in a great mood for no reason and everything seems like a good idea.

Jump off a roof just to prove you can do it? Yeah, sure.

Keep drinking until you can’t feel the hand holding the bottle? Cool.

Randomly burst into song, accompanied with background music, while your entire team stands around with blank faces and watch? Awesome, whatever.

“[ _When you came in, the air went out_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0eQL5R3bw4),” Steve sings, smiling easily, coming to a stop in where Tony would call his ‘personal bubble,’ close enough that their chests are nearly touching. “ _And every shadow-”_ he lifts a hand, brushes his thumb along Tony’s jawline, his index finger on the bow of his bottom lip- _“filled up with doubt_.”

He starts walking the both of them backwards, his hands on Tony’s shoulders, and Tony is grinning, and his eyes are glazed over until they’re sort of grey-ish, which, hey, isn’t normal.

Steve keeps singing as Tony’s back presses into the wall: “ _I don’t know who you think you are, but before the night is through_.”

Steve leans in, in, in, until his mouth is brushing Tony’s ear, his voice dropping slightly. “ _I wanna do bad things with you_.”

Then he’s pulling away, his hands are sliding off of Tony’s arms, and he’s moving backwards in time with the song, and so not normal, and the Avengers are all standing around and there’s music and what the hell is going on-

“ _I’m the kind to sit up in his room. Heart sick and eyes filled up with blue_.”

His hands come up again, this time to close in Tony’s damp shirt, and pulls him close with it. “ _I don’t know what you’ve done to me, but I know this much is true- I wanna do bad things with you._ ”

And then a short guitar solo, in which Steve thinks all the air has been cut off to his brain, and his head is throbbing, and somehow he gets walked into one of the vaulting horses, and Tony pushes him until Steve sits down on it, and they’re both smiling like stage performers, and what, what’s-

Any thought Steve was having goes hazy as Tony presses closer, his mouth pressing a kiss to the base of his ear before singing, in a slower, lazier voice than Steve: “ _When you came in… the air went out.”_

Steve sucks in a breath as Tony hitches one leg over Steve’s hip, then the other, and then Tony’s straddling him with pupils dilated larger than twenty-cent pieces. “ _And all those shadows there...”_ Tony noses at the edge of Steve’s ear. _“-filled up with doubt.”_

Tony’s hands slide down Steve’s back until they’re cupping his ass, and squeezes once before he pushes him closer and pulls himself in at the same time so they’re pressed together all the way down their bodies. _“I don’t know who you think you are, but before the night is through, I wanna do bad things with you.”_

Tony’s grin turns wicked, almost liquid, and he rolls his hips forwards on the next line. “ _I wanna do real bad things with you_.”

Then more guitar, and Tony keeps rolling his hips, and Steve does the same back to him until it’s a slow give-and-take, a smooth roll that makes Steve feel like he’s going to catch on fire from the inside.

They both sing the next line, hips still moving against each other, mouths next to each other’s ears: “ _I don’t know what you’ve done to me, but I know this much is true_ -”

Tony breathes, “ _I wanna do bad things with you_ ,” alone, and there’s a spike in the music. When Steve sings, he barely recognizes his own wrecked voice: “ _I wanna do real bad things with you._ ”

Steve doesn’t really pay attention to what the music does after that, and then there’s a bit of drums, probably, and then- then-

Darcy says, “Wow, _what_ ,” and everyone’s blinking hard and shaking their heads like they’ve just woken up, and Steve has a lapful of a sweating, gaping Tony Stark, who happens to have his giant erection pressing into Steve’s giant erection.

“I,” Steve says, his voice cracking in the middle. “Um?”

Tony says, high pitched: “I didn’t, uh.”

“Yeah, no, I know-”

“It’s not, like, I didn’t-”

“It’s- you’re- it’s fine, honestly-”

Tony says, “Yep,” like he’s been gargling something with sharp edges, and makes a move like he’s going to pat Steve on the shoulder like they usually do after sparring, before he decides against it and climbs off of him.

Steve folds his arms across his chest and very pointedly doesn’t look down at either of their obviously tented sweatpants.

Most of the gym clears their throats loudly.

“Oh, hey, look at that thing on the ceiling,” Bruce says mildly, scratching his nose and fiddling with his glasses and doing anything to keep his hands busy, because that’s what he does when things get awkward.

“It is truly a remarkable ceiling… thing,” Thor tries, his head tipped back.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you blush like this,” Darcy says, squinting at Tony’s face, and Tony gives her the finger, scowling.

Natasha’s mouth is doing that thing it does where she’s struggling incredibly hard not to smile and is having to revert into her spy training. “Guys, I think we’re just lucky it was a short song.”

Darcy shrugs. “I would’ve preferred it if-”

“Yeah, Darcy, we all know about your guy on guy porn on your laptop,” Clint says, ignoring her indignant squawk.

“Great, whatever,” Tony says, staring at the ceiling along with everyone else. “Why the fuck did I just sing Jace Everett and straddle Cap?”

“I will forever hold a new appreciation for that song.”

“Shut up, Darcy.”

“Seriously, right now the two of you are the most uncomfortable people I’ve ever seen and I’ve walked in on my grandparents having sex-”

“Thank you for that image, you can all look away from the ceiling, it’s safe.”

Steve politely pretends not to notice how everyone casually glances downwards at both of them before looking at their faces.

“Clint,” Steve says, and he’s never going to stop blushing, ever. “This wouldn’t happen to be what Coulson was talking about, was it?”

Clint shrugs. “People start singing with no control over it. I’m just happy we didn’t have to be backup dancers. This time, anyway.”

“Mm,” Steve says. “What did you sing, Clint?”

Clint’s face flickers. “Who says it wasn’t Phil?”

“Was it?”

“…No.”

There’s a short silence where everyone looks towards Clint, which quite frankly is a relief right now, until Clint snaps, “Look, it doesn’t matter, okay? Something happens, or someone says something, or someone even _thinks_ about something and then suddenly it’s that episode of Buffy. Which is why we’re not allowed in the field, in case the Hulk starts singing about how he wishes he could smash everything all the time, or whatever.”

Bruce’s expression twists, like he’s thinking about it.

 

 

 

 

Of course, three days later there’s a rampage of mind-controlled teenagers wreaking havoc on the city, which only stops after they smash the device causing it and having a musical number- Steve recognizes it afterwards, since he’s heard it on the radio.

Apparently the song was called, ‘[The Fighter](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TzCLpgbJ_g),’ and at one point there was a random spotlight out of nowhere, highlighting the correct people on the right lyrics- ‘the right people’ sometimes being Steve, sometimes being Clint, or Natasha, or the rest of the Avengers in their turns, and sometimes being strangers who stop in the middle of the street and somehow get heard by everyone without using a microphone.

Tony had sung, _give me scars_ , and then Natasha: _give me pain_ \- then all of them chorusing, _and then say to me, say to me, say to me_ -

Steve had sung, _there goes a fi-ghter_ , and everyone would stop running for cover, and one person would get lit up by a light with supposedly no source. From what Steve had seen, there had been a woman in a two-piece suit, a young boy with a black eye, and a teenager with hair down to her waist. He didn’t know any of their names, and they were gone when the song ended.

It’s all over Youtube, all over the news, and everyone who hasn’t been under the influence of Loki’s current antics think it’s a publicity stunt.

Which is fair enough, in Steve’s opinion- New Yorkers have been through a lot of crap, but spontaneous music videos aren’t one of them.

Clint continues to avoid Coulson, who looks worse every time Steve sees him, and Steve and Tony avoid each other as much as they can in case they start singing again.

Which, again, is fair enough, because according to Coulson’s reports, people could only sing things they really mean, which is. Which is, uh.

Well, then.

 

 

 

 

They get bitched out by Fury for fighting when they’re banned, and Steve says ‘yessir’ too many times and misses how Tony doesn’t roll his eyes and shove him lightly when he gets back to his seat because of it.

Steve can still feel Tony’s sweat on him, sometimes.

 

 

 

 

After the meeting, Steve catches Tony by the arm. “Hey.”

“Uh, hey,” Tony says, and then hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “Look, I have to get somewhere, meeting, Pepper will kill me if I don’t go to this one, you know how it is-”

“To _ny_ ,” Steve sighs. “I just- I don’t want what happened to screw up our friendship.”

Tony’s gaze flickers down to where Steve’s holding his arm, and Steve lets go quickly.

“I mean, it’s.” Steve swallows. “You’re a very- attractive man, and the serum made-”

Tony snorts. “You were hot before the serum.”

Steve momentarily forgets the entire speech he had planned and just stares at Tony instead.

Tony mumbles, “What, you totally were.” He clears his throat. “Uh, you were saying something?”

“What? Oh, right.” Steve straightens up again. “I wanted to ask if we could go back to how it was- before. You mean a lot to me and I’d hate it if we stopped being friends because of, uh. Uh. The song.”

Tony nods like he caught how Steve said ‘the song’ instead of ‘the fact that we want to screw each other six ways to Sunday.’

“Okay.”

Steve’s smile is more relieved than he’d like. “Okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” Tony cracks a grin. “Besides, you’re not the first person to be ridiculously attracted to me and you won’t be the last.”

Steve’s smile falters and so does Tony’s, and then Tony’s doing the aborted shoulder-clap thing again so his hand never actually touches Steve’s shoulder. “But, uh, we’re good.”

“We’re good?”

“Yep.”

“Good,” Steve nods, and they stand there nodding at each other for the next ten seconds until Tony says, “Uh, I have to go-”

“Meeting, right.” Steve moves out of his way and Tony smiles at him vaguely before leaving.

 

 

 

 

On the third hour of sparring next to Clint, Clint blurts, “I sung fucking Pink.”

Steve stops, breathing hard. “What?”

Clint throws another punch at the punching bag like it insulted his mother. “Pink, man. I sung _Pink_. My manliness is drying up by the second.”

“The singer?” Steve’s heard of her, but he doesn’t think he’s actually listened to any of her work. All he knows is that he has no idea if that’s her legal name or not, and she’s blonde.

“Yeah, the singer.” Clint keeps punching the bag, and for a few seconds that’s all the sound there is: _thump, thump, thump_ -

“What’d you sing?”

The thumping stops. “I told you.”

“Yeah, but what song?”

There’s a pause, and the thumping starts up again.

“You’re not avoiding him because of the artist, Clint. What’d you sing?”

Thump, thump, thump. “I sung ‘[ _Please Don’t Leave Me_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMTeKtKdCqY).’” Thump, thump, thump.

“…So you avoiding him is basically the complete opposite of what the song is saying?”

“It’s _awkward_ , okay,” Clint says through gritted teeth.

“He says to the man who grinded on Tony and sung a two-minute duet on how he wants to sleep with him.”

That earns him a huffed laugh, but then Clint’s punching again. “The song says some stupid stuff and I was trying to laugh it off before he told me that Loki made it that people could only sing the truth.”

“What kind of stupid stuff?”

Clint doesn’t answer.

“Clint?”

Thump, thump, thump.

 

 

 

 

Steve has nothing to do, Clint’s still running away with his tail under his legs whenever Coulson shows up and screw it, Steve can have a goddamn lazy day if he wants to, no matter whether or not his teammates are being morons.

He makes it through a blessed fours hours of nothing happening before Darcy stumbles on her way to the table and spills boiling coffee down the entire front of Steve’s shirt.

“AH!” Steve remembers at the last second not to touch it in case his hands get burned, too, and Darcy blurts, “OhmygodI’msosorryholyshit.”

Steve’s reassuring smile is probably a pained grimace. “It’s fine,” he says, and takes the non-boiling parts of his shirt and lifts it over his head.

Darcy grabs a few paper towels, dabbing at his chest. “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”

“It’s fine,” Steve repeats, wet shirt bunched in one hand. He looks at it and sighs. He hopes he can get the stains out, it was a good shirt.

Darcy seems to be taking extra care drying Steve’s chest, her face hovering oddly close.

“Uh,” Steve says. “Darcy, I’m going to go and put on a new shirt. If that’s okay with you.”

“Oh yeah cool great see you,” Darcy says in a high voice, dabbing at his chest with the soaked paper towel a few times before drawing back.

Steve is reaching for the doorknob when the door in question opens from the other side and Tony walks into his naked chest.

For a second they stay there, squashed together, until they both reel back at almost the same time.

“Fuck, I think I broke my nose on your abs-”

“Darcy spilled coffee on my shirt-”

Tony says, “Oh, _did_ she now,” looking over at her. “What a _coincidence_.”

“Hey, that time was totally an accident!”

“Sure it was.”

Steve ducks his head as he passes Tony, shirt dripping on the floor as he does.

 

 

 

Steve takes a shower, changes his shirt, beats the crap out of three punching bags and changes his shirt again.

By then it’s been a few hours and he’s wearing his third shirt of the day, and when he walks into the lounge after making his sandwich, the sight of Clint and Coulson curled into each other makes him let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

He drops into a chair next to Natasha. “Thank god.”

“Don’t say that loud enough for them to hear you,” she replies quietly.

Steve nods. “What happened?”

“Music swelled, tears were shed, I was a backup dancer. It was weird and I’m actually thankful to Loki for this one,” Natasha says. “Coulson sung _Pink_ to him.”

It takes a second for Steve to remember where he heard that. “ _’Please Don’t Leave Me_?’”

Natasha looks over at him. “Clint told you?”

“He might’ve mentioned it.”

Natasha hums. “Apparently the Powers That Be think that Clint was being a moron and made Coulson sing it back to him. And then halfway through it became a duet. Now balance is restored and they can both stop being idiots.”

She looks at him pointedly while she says the last part, and Steve raises his eyebrows at her. “Tony and I are fine.”

“Oh?”

“I talked to him about it. We’re not going to let it get in the way of our friendship.”

“Let what get in the way?”

“The whole, uh.” Steve squirms. “The song.”

“You mean how you both want to jump on that?”

“Yeah, that.”

Natasha continues to look at him until Steve turns to look at her. “What?”

Her smile is surprisingly fond. “You really think that’s all that’s going on between the two of you?”

“The song-”

“A few days ago Jane sang to Thor about how she loved his ‘luscious, golden locks,’” Natasha says. “Somehow I don’t think that’s all that there is to their relationship. Yes, I think you both want to jump each other’s bones. But there’s definitely more to it than just that, Steve. You already know that.”

Steve can’t find anything to say to that, so he stays silent until Natasha nudges him.

“Go,” she tells him. “He’s right over there and I need some entertainment until Masterchef comes on.”

Steve makes a face. “Masterchef?”

“Not all of us hate reality TV, Cap,” she reminds him, and pushes at his elbow. “People who have already sung are more in control of starting another song. Go. Do _not_ make me sing backup vocals.”

“No promises,” Steve says, and pushes up off the couch. He stands there for a few seconds, fingers flexing around open air, before he sits down again. “I take it back. Can’t do it. You go.”

“You want me to go over and sing about my feelings for him? Because I’m pretty sure that song would never sell and would involve too much strangulation to get on the radio.”

Steve glares, and this time she shoves him. Not a big shove, just enough to get him to stand up again.

Steve takes a breath. “Are you sure it’ll work?”

“Probably?”

“Probably? So chances are I’m just going to be standing in front of him with my mouth open like an idiot?”

“Probably.”

“You’re so helpful, thank you so much,” Steve hisses.

Natasha rolls her eyes before craning her neck. “Hey, Tony!”

Steve freezes as Tony looks over from the couch on the other side of the room where he’s fiddling with his tablet.

“Yeah?”

“Come over here a second,” Natasha says.

Tony just looks at her.

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not that.”

“Is it anything I’m going to have to explain to medical?”

“Nope.”

“Promise?”

“Pinky-promise, even.”

“Okaaay,” Tony says suspiciously, putting his tablet on the cushion next to him and getting up, walking over so he’s standing in front of her, next to Steve. “What?”

Natasha sits back. “You’re welcome. Sing.”

Tony says, “What,” flatly, and that’s when he notices Steve.

“Uh,” Steve says. “Hi.”

Tony says, “What,” again, in a shriller tone than before.

Steve is suddenly hyper-aware of his tongue in his mouth, pressing against his teeth, fat and heavy and _shit_ , he’s standing in front of Tony with his mouth open like an idiot.

 _How do I jump-start this_ , he thinks. _Am I supposed to start doing voice exercises? What the hell am I_ -

Then it floods him- the drunken, hazy feeling, like nothing matters and everything is fine and all he needs to do right now is sing, and the music starts and he doesn’t even care.

“ _[Everyone's around, no words are coming out](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3y_tjLBqTY)_ ,” he starts, and Tony’s eyes have gone grey again, saucer-large. “ _And I can't find my breath, can we just say the rest with no -sound. And I know this isn't enough, I still don't measure up. And I'm not prepared-”_

“ _Sorry is never there when you ne-e-ed it_ ,” Tony joins in, soft and reaching. The next lines are sung together, close enough that their breaths mingle. “ _And I do want you know I hold you up above everyone. And I do want you know I think you'd be good to me, and I'd be so good to you.”_

Tony steps closer without the hesitance Steve expects, and Steve doesn’t sing the next line with him. “ _I wo-ould...”_

Tony’s voice shakes through it, and then he’s breathing in through his nose as the music stutters. “ _I thought I saw a sign, somewhere between the lines. Maybe it's me, maybe I only see, what I_ -” Tony reaches up; hand combing through the back of Steve’s hair, dream-like, and the next word drags along with his fingers. _“…want.”_

“ _But I still have your letter, just got caught between someone I just invented, and who I really am and who I've-”_

“- _beco-o-ome_ ,” Steve sings with him, and the hand in his hair tightens as both of Steve’s hands come around the back of Tony’s neck.

Everyone around them is white noise, blank-faced and staring at nothing as the music kicks up, and Steve can’t focus on anything except for Tony’s mouth moving.

“ _And I do want you know I hold you up above everyone. And I do want you know I think you'd be good to me, and I'd be so good to you_.”

“ _I wo-ould_ ,” Steve sings, softer than Tony had, and as he does, he catches a flicker of brown in the grey of Tony’s glazed eyes.

Then they join again, shakily: “ _And I do want you know I hold you up above everyone. And I do want you know I think you'd be good to me, and I'd be so good to you._ ”

Steve breaks off, sings: “ _I'd be good to you_ -”

Tony meets him halfway, giving Steve just enough time to catch his breath. “ _I'd be good to you-”_

“ _I'd be good to you_ -”

“ _I’d be good to you_ -”

“ _I’d be **so** good_ -”

“ _To you_ ,” they finish, and hold the note until the haze starts to fade, fast enough that Steve nearly stumbles.

The silence doesn’t last long, and it’s broken by Clint, funnily enough.

“If Loki enchanted us all to break into song during sex, I’m putting an arrow through his eyesocket.”

That’s met by Darcy’s, “Hear, hear,” and Jane’s giggling, and Steve’s blushing again when he meets Tony’s eyes.

“I-?”

“Would you like to go to dinner with me,” Tony says, rushed. “Like, now.”

“It’s four in the afternoon,” Steve says, and then: “I mean, yes! Of course, yes. Uh, early dinner?”

“After you,” Tony says, stepping out of the way so he nearly bumps into the coffee table.

Steve takes his hand as he passes, and doesn’t miss how Tony smiles at him as he does.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me here at my [tumblr.](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com)


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